Foundling (5 page)

“Preparing to go abroad aboard your precious rams, eh? Fat lot of good reading
these
has done!” Gosling leaned right into Rossamünd’s face. “Don’t think
you’re
any better than me, m’lady. You’re still here too! No one wants
you
.” Gosling stood straight, his arms folded and his nose in the air. “My family will be coming back for me soon, you’ll see. Then I’ll show you who’s better.” Gosling had been saying this ever since he had been taken into the foundlingery. His expression took on an even nastier curl. “Not even old Fransi-
fart
will make you feel better then, when you’re left behind and watching me go back to the quality I was born to!”

“Do not say his name like that . . .” warned Rossamünd.

“Or what? Or what?! What a fine bunch you and he would make—Rosy Posy and ol’ Fransi-fart! What a stink!”

Rossamünd scowled. “He treats you as good as anyone—and better than you deserve! Call
me
what you like, but leave your betters out!” As true as it might be, this sounded lame even to Rossamünd, and had no effect at all on his tormentor.

“He’s a pocked-faced old ignoramus, and when Mamma and Papa come back for me, I’ll get them to buy the whole stinking, tottering place and then kick him and the rest out to rot! Or . . .” Gosling finished with a malicious grin, “burn this all down to the cellars!”

Rossamünd was speechless. He glared and spluttered. He failed to defend the honor of his dormitory master, or Verline or anyone else.

Gosling swaggered off, sneering and making noises like a baby. “Oo, I’d better stop. Madam Rosy is going to make me eat my nasty little words. Oo . . .” Just before he disappeared through the warped wooden door, he hurled Rossamünd’s reader at him. Rossamünd ducked, but it still managed to glance his left cheek.

That’s the
last
time!
Rossamünd vowed to himself.

 

Days gathered into weeks. Rossamünd despaired utterly of ever receiving an offer of employment. Then, with the end of the hiring season three weeks gone, and the cold month of Lirium well under way, an official-looking stranger arrived at the foundlingery. He was shown about the institute by Madam Opera. News of the arrival and the tour flashed around the foundlingery more quickly than the burst of a skold’s potive. While sitting alert in Master Pinsum’s matters, letters and generalities class, Rossamünd spotted the stranger watching proceedings from the door, giving the distinct air of seeing all and missing nothing.

When gaps in his duties allowed, Rossamünd continued to watch the stranger furtively, silently nursing his urgent, yearning hopes for a new life of adventure and advancement. He observed Gosling doing the same from a different vantage. Perhaps here was someone with an offer of employment for one of them? Perhaps for both? Perhaps, on this very ordinary midautumn afternoon, one of their lives was about to change forever . . .

But after the seventh bell of the afternoon watch, it was Rossamünd who was summoned to Madam Opera’s rather large, riotously cluttered boudoir-cum-office.

Gosling would not be pleased.

 

 

 

D
OWN many well-trod flights of creaking, wobbling wood or frigid, slippery slate stairs Rossamünd went, through the all-too-familiar narrows of the foundlingery’s halls and passages, all the way down to the emerald-painted door of Madam Opera’s downstairs apartments. Children were normally summoned to the madam’s sacred apartments only when in the worst kind of trouble.

Rossamünd’s head spun.
Am I in trouble after all? Was it just chance that this stranger happened to be there
? He stood in the musty parlor before the green door, where all comers were to wait until summoned.

Tap, tap
went his boyish knuckles on this hard wooden portal. He was let in immediately by the manservant Carp. Within, the madam sat like some august queen, almost obscured by the piles of loose papers, ledgers and registers that rose in clumsy stacks upon either side of her solid blackwood desk. Her chestnut hair had been knotted high into a hive of snaking coils. She had clearly gone to some lengths with her appearance. The stranger was there, standing silently by the desk. He wore a dark coachman’s cloak that hid all other attire, even his boots, and he held in his hands an excessively tall tricorner hat of fine black felt known as a thrice-high. There was something wrong with his eyes. Not wanting to be caught staring, Rossamünd flicked his attention between Madam Opera and the stranger’s distracting orbs.

“You sent for me, Madam Opera?” Rossamünd croaked in a small voice, bowing uncertainly.

The madam beamed at him. This was unnerving. She rarely beamed. “I did, my dear boy. Come closer, come closer.” A hand waved at him, the handkerchief it clasped fluttering like a small white flag and filling the small office with the scent of patchouli water. “Today is a very important one for you, young master Rossamünd.” Madam Opera glanced almost coyly at the man alongside her, as though they shared a special secret.

Rossamünd felt his heart beat faster.

“Mister Sebastipole here has come as an agent all the way from High Vesting, and has declared that he would very much like to meet you.” Madam Opera stood, an action which made the stranger straighten automatically. “Mister Sebastipole, I would like you to meet young master Rossamünd. Young master Rossamünd, Mister Sebastipole.” She curtsied as she offered these greetings, her arms stretching out to encompass her two guests.

The stranger nodded, the corner of his mouth twisting slightly. “Rossamünd. What a—ah—fine name for, I am told, a fine lad.”

Adults were often remarking on his name, and it was by these reactions that instinctively Rossamünd would gauge a person’s trustworthiness. Had he not been unsettled by the stranger’s eyes he might have thought this Mister Sebastipole was subtly mocking him. Rossamünd dared one quick, determined stare. A thrill spread through his entire body: the man’s eyes were completely the wrong color! What should have been white was bloodred, and his irises were the palest, most piercing blue. This man in front of him was a leer! “Mister . . . S-S-Sebastipole.” Rossamünd bowed awkwardly. For a moment he could hardly think: everything he knew about these men was now tumbling through his brain in much the same confused way as the Hundred Rules of Harundo. Leers were trackers, trackers of men, and even more so of monsters. They drenched their eyes with forbidden chemicals to enable them to see into things, through things, to spy on hidden things, to tell even if a person was lying.

Rossamünd gulped. Unable to help himself, he looked surreptitiously for the man’s sthenicon. He was fascinated by them, and longed to try one on. It was a rare thing to meet a leer in the city, and Rossamünd had certainly never encountered one before.
What could a leer want with me?

This fellow had come from High Vesting, Madam Opera had said. High Vesting was one of Boschenberg’s colonies and the harbor of her naval fleet. Perhaps this terrible-eyed stranger worked for the navy. Rossamünd tried to quell the rising excitement that threatened to overwhelm him. Oh, to become a vinegaroon—that was his heart’s desire!

Madam Opera continued gravely. “Now, Rossamünd, Mister Sebastipole is here to offer you a chance for employment—an opportunity I understand you very much desire. I want you to take his proposal seriously and consider well what a fine offer this is. Please go on, sir.” She waved her hand ingratiatingly.

Mister Sebastipole cleared his throat and narrowed those intense eyes. “Well, young master Rossamünd; I have come to represent my masters in Winstermill
and
High Vesting, who in their turn represent their masters, who represent their master—that is, the Emperor himself.”

Rossamünd was impressed. Somehow, he could tell that Mister Sebastipole had meant him to be.

“I am told you are quick of eye, good with letters and know a little of the chemistry,” the leer continued. “Would you agree this is so?”

Rossamünd hesitated. This did not quite
sound
like the navy. “I . . . I suppose I would, sir.”

Mister Sebastipole continued. “Very good. You see, our Imperial charge—handed even from the great Imperial Capital of Clementine itself—is the care, the maintenance and clear passage of one of our Most Imperial Master’s Highroads: the Conduit Vermis, which follows its course from Winstermill through the Ichormeer—that some call the Gluepot—and on eastward to far-famed Wörms.”

Rossamünd blinked. This definitely was
not
the navy.

“I have come to offer you the employment of a lifetime—that is, to work the lamps with us and tread the paths of this great highway to keep it safe for all happy travelers. In short, we would like you to become a lamplighter. I am pleased to say that this good lady, Madam Opera”—he half turned his body and gave the slightest bow toward the woman—“agrees you would be excellent for the job.”

Something about the way the lamplighter’s agent said all this sounded very final.

Rossamünd’s head was spinning once more.
A lamplighter? They wanted him to become a lamplighter? What happened to the navy?
Now he would never see the sea . . .

“Um . . .” Rossamünd tried his best to look grateful. “I . . . ah . . .” This was not the plan at all! Stuck on the same stretch of road day after day, night after night, lighting the lamps, dousing them again, lighting them again. No chance for prize money. No chance for glory. Could it get worse? He had no choice. It was either become a lamplighter or stay at the foundlingery. A glance at Madam Opera showed her genial expression becoming stiff with impatience. He was stuck between two very unpleasant choices—the stone and the sty, as Master Fransitart might say.

“Thank you, Mister Sebastipole,” he managed, giving another awkward bow.

“As you should!” Madam Opera beamed and clapped once and loudly. Nothing about Mister Sebastipole’s face altered at all. He clearly had not anticipated the slightest resistance to his suggestion. Madam Opera stood and shepherded Rossamünd toward the door. “Go and ready yourself. Fransitart will know what to do . . . Now,
Mister
Sebastipole,” he heard her murmur as she closed the door behind him, “you will stay for a sip of tea?”

And that was that.

The necessary arrangements were made. Rossamünd was to meet Mister Sebastipole in two days’ time, at the Padderbeck, one of Boschenberg’s smaller piers upon the mighty Humour River. His luggage was to be limited to no more than one ox trunk and a satchel. He was to be dressed in hardwearing clothes for a long journey, and a sturdy hat too. Unfortunately, he did not have any. Nor did he possess a suitably sturdy hat. As for the rest of his belongings, the collection of his entire life—they fitted neatly into two old hat boxes. For the rest of the day and all through the next, interested staff of Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls, the Vlinderstrat, Boschenberg, were a-bustle as Rossamünd was prepared for his great going forth. Even the madam herself joined in, drawing up a list of what he needed, entitling it
Rossamünd’s Necessaries
.

Masters Fransitart and Craumpalin took Rossamünd to see Gauldsman Five, the gaulder. His was the best place in this part of the city to get clothing sturdy enough for Rossamünd’s journey, for Gauldsman Five made the best proofing. All proofing could turn sword strokes, and could even stop a ball fired from a musket or pistol. The simplest piece of proofing was costly, but the better the quality of protection the higher a garment’s price. Proofing was, however, also absolutely necessary for folk looking to venture beyond the city walls, where monsters and brigands and other horrors waited. It was made from cloth—anything from hemp to silk—treated with a chemical potion known as gauld, which made it very hard to tear or puncture. Broad straps of gauld-hardened leather and thin padding of soft, spongy pockweed were then sewn into the lining as the unproofed cloth was turned into garments. After this the whole array was soaked in gauld, and then cooked and soaked again and so on. Each gaulder had his own methods and process, and his own secret recipes. Rossamünd thought it almost too wonderful to believe that he might be getting such amazing clothing for his very own. He was speechless with glee as he left the marine society.

Gauldsman Five’s shop and fitting rooms were a whole suburb away, in the Mortar, on Tin Drum Lane, and the visit there would be a little adventure in itself. Indeed, any excursion from the foundlingery was a significant event. Rossamünd had been out from Madam Opera’s only a dozen times in his whole life, usually to go down to the Humour with the other foundlings to practice rowing and swimming. In fact, before today, his most thrilling excursion had been a trip to the house of Verline’s sister Praeline in the shadows of Boschenberg’s outermost curtain wall.